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FRONT-LINE staff at homeless charity St Mungo’s Broadway ramped up pressure on cost-cutting bosses yesterday with plans for an epic 10-day strike aimed at defending its quality services.
Five days after a week-long walkout a mass meeting of workers voted unanimously to do it again — and this time to up the ante.
Hundreds will strike from 8am on Wednesday November 5 until 7.59am on November 15.
Unite the union general secretary Len McCluskey pledged full support for their struggle.
He told the mass meeting they could expect backing “‘in every way possible, in a pivotal dispute that is really about respect — respect for vulnerable people and the workers that care for them.”
New anti-union managers brought in after a merger with failed cost-cutters Broadway provoked the St Mungo’s staff by pulling out of an industry pay deal and slashing new project workers’ wages by £5,000.
Chief executive and former Broadway boss Howard Sinclair contemptuously told trade magazine Inside Housing that Unite members should give up trying “to turn back the clock” on the plans imposed on March 31.
But pickets told the Morning Star last week that it was Mr Sinclair who was turning back the clock by cutting starting wages to a level last seen a decade ago.
Staff fear that St Mungo’s unique selling point — quality additional services that are the envy of other homeless organisations — will be destroyed.
Several council commissioners have already demanded urgent talks with bosses.
Unite regional officer Nicky Marcus warned that donors to the part-charity had told the union they were considering withdrawing their funding over the dispute.
“Many of them have contacted us to voice their disgust at the new management’s approach and the cheap labour model they have introduced,” she said.
“The fact that our members are prepared to take 17 days of strike action shows the complete failure of the new management team to engage with our members who look after some of the most vulnerable members in society.”
Mr Sinclair “need only pick up the phone” to start resolving the dispute, she said.
